righted it, I know, and been a loyal husband to you, and a good father to his child.  For whatever his faults were he was neither callous nor brutal.  You prevented him from doing this,—­you were tired of him —­your so-called ‘love’ for him was a mere selfish caprice of the moment—­and you preferred deceit and a rich marriage to the simple duty of a woman!  Well!—­you may find excuses for yourself,—­I cannot find them for you!  I could not remain by your side as a husband and run the risk of coming constantly in contact, as we did last night, with that innocent girl, placed as she is, in a situation of so much difficulty, by the sins of her parents—­her mother, my wife!—­her father, my dead friend!  The position is, and would be untenable!”

Still she stood, looking at him.

“Have you done?” she asked.

He met her fixed gaze, coldly.

“I have.  I have said all I wish to say.  So far as I am concerned the incident is closed.  I will only bid you good-night—­and farewell!”

“Good-night—­and farewell!” she repeated, with a mocking drawl,—­ then she suddenly burst into a fit of shrill laughter.  “Oh dear, oh dear!” she cried, between little screams of hysterical mirth—­ “You are so very funny, you know!  Like—­what’s-his-name?—­Marius in the ruins of Carthage!—­or one of those antique classical bores with their household gods broken around them!  You—­you ought to have lived in their days!—­you are so terribly behind the times!” She laughed recklessly again.  “We don’t do the Marius and Carthage business now—­life’s too full and too short!  Really, Richard, I’m afraid you’re getting very old!—­poor dear!—­past sixty I know!—­ and you’re quite prehistoric in some of your fancies!—­’Good-night!’—­er—­’and farewell!’ Sounds so stagey, doesn’t it!” She wiped the spasmodic tears of mirth from her eyes, and still shaking with laughter gathered up her rich ermine wrap on one white, jewelled arm.  “Womanliness—­motherliness!—­good Lord, deliver us!—­I never thought you likely to preach at me—­if I had I wouldn’t have told you anything!  I took you for a sensible man of the world—­but you are only a stupid old-fashioned thing after all!  Good-night!—­and farewell!”

She performed the taunting travesty of an elaborate Court curtsey and passed him—­a handsome, gleaming vision of satins, laces and glittering jewels—­and opening the door with some noise and emphasis, she turned her head gracefully over her shoulder.  Unkind laughter still lit up her face and hard, brilliant eyes.

“Good-night!—­farewell!” she said again, and was gone.

For a moment he stood inert where she left him—­then sinking into a chair he covered his face with his hands.  So he remained for some time—­silently wrestling with himself and his own emotions.  He had to realise that at an age when he might naturally have looked for a tranquil home life—­a life tended and soothed into its natural decline by the care and devotion of the wife he had undemonstratively